Free Republic

Four days from now, on Monday, January 20th, 2020, the Virginia Citizens’ Defense League is holding their annual Lobby Day at the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, VA. There has been a lot of…contentiousness this year. Among other things, the Governor has declared a state of emergency and (probably unlawfully) declared the State Capitol grounds a gun-free zone. I say that, because of this: At this hour, there is a USAF U-28A aircraft circling the Capitol.

Every dollar Terry Rolin had saved over a lifetime was stacked in a large Tupperware container: $82,373. At 79, he was aging and worried about keeping so much cash on hand, his daughter said, so during one of her visits he asked her to open a joint bank account. Rebecca Brown was catching a flight home from the Pittsburgh airport early the next day and said she didn’t have time to stop at a bank. She confirmed on a government website that it’s legal to carry any amount of cash on a domestic flight and tucked the money in her...

New Zealanders are receiving home visits from police to check on their political views, with one individual claiming that authorities asked him if he supported Donald Trump. The visits are taking place as a response to March’s Christchurch mosque massacre. In one clip, armed police arrive at a man’s home on Sunday morning to question him in relation to his political beliefs. “The reason we’re here, basically it’s down to the recent events in Christchurch, with the shooting there, a number of people have been identified who we’ve been asked to go and speak to, so you’re one of those...

After police came into his home, officers handcuffed him for six hours as they collected his equipment. The search warrant for his home said officers were investigating “stolen or embezzled” property. It was unclear whether he was handcuffed because of the guns he says he legally owns. Carmody said the guns were locked in a safe, and he said that over the hours-long search, it was evident officers didn’t view him as a threat. At one point, some police took off their bulletproof vests on account of the heat, he said. While he was shackled, officers got a second warrant...

Deputies in this corner of western Oregon outside ultraliberal Portland used to track down criminals the old-fashioned way, faxing caught-on-camera images of a suspect around the office in hope that someone might recognize the face. Then, in late 2017, the Washington County Sheriff's Office became the first law enforcement agency in the country known to use Amazon's artificial-intelligence tool Rekognition, transforming this thicket of forests and suburbs into a public testing ground for a new wave of experimental police surveillance techniques. Almost overnight, deputies saw their investigative powers supercharged, allowing them to scan for matches of a suspect's face across...

Janet Reno, the nation’s first female attorney general, approved the FBI’s assault on the Davidians. Previously, she had zealously prosecuted child abuse cases in Dade County, Fla, though many of her high-profile convictions were later overturned because of gross violations of due process. Reno approved the FBI assault after being told “babies were being beaten.” It is not known who told her about the false claims of child abuse. Reno’s sterling reputation helped the government avoid any apparent culpability for the deaths of 27 children on April 19, 1993. After Reno publicly promised to take responsibility for the outcome at...

The Salt Lake City police detective who arrested nurse Alex Wubbels for not allowing police to draw blood from an unconscious patient has been fired from his part-time paramedic job with Gold Cross Ambulance Service. Payne was placed on paid administrative leave from his full-time job as an officer with the Salt Lake City Police Department after a video of the arrest went viral. In a separate video recorded after the arrest, Payne asked another officer how the incident would affect his part-time position with the ambulance company. Payne bragged that he could retaliate against the hospital by only bringing...

The governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands has ordered the territory's national guard to begin seizing guns and ammunition from citizens in preparation for Hurricane Irma's landfall. In an executive order signed Monday, Gov. Kenneth Mapp instructed Adjutant General Deborah Howell "to take whatever actions she considers necessary to carry out the assigned mission" of maintaining and restoring public order. "The Adjutant General is authorized and directed to seize arms, ammunition, explosives, incendiary material and any other property that may be required by the military forces for the performance of this emergency mission," the governor said in the order. The...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – WDRB News is fighting what its attorney calls a “clearly illegal“ search warrant obtained by Louisville Metro Police that would allow officers to comb through the station’s newsroom and access computers, notes and unpublished material gathered for a recent news story about a suspect in a police shooting. Jon Fleischaker, an attorney representing WDRB, said it is the first time he has seen such an order in at least the last 40 years, when federal law prohibited law enforcement agencies from serving search warrants on news organizations except in extremely rare cases. “There are very serious...

A Georgia homeowner shot in the neck after police went to the wrong house has died, a lawyer for the family said Friday. William Powell, 63, died Thursday afternoon at Atlanta Medical Center, attorney Keith Martin said. A preliminary review of the 911 call indicates the three officers who responded had gone to the wrong home and showed up at Powell's house, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. Powell was armed with a gun and was shot in the neck by one of the officers, authorities said. He had grabbed the gun for protection, not knowing who might be outside...

KNBC reported that the man -- identified by authorities as Francis Pusok -- appeared to be kicked 17 times, punched 37 times and hit with a baton four times. Pusok was later hospitalized, KNBC reported, citing authorities. "The video surrounding this arrest is disturbing and I have ordered an internal investigation be conducted immediately," McMahon said in a statement. The ACLU of Southern California issued a statement Friday saying that it was "deeply troubled" by the images. "While we applaud Sheriff John McMahon's prompt decision to investigate the disturbing actions of his deputies, we believe more is needed," the organization...

HOMESTEAD, FL — EXCLUSIVE — A Florida couple was traumatized after a dozen heavily armed SWAT agents crashed through their front door, flash-banged their cat, aimed rifles at them and searched their home without explanation. * * * * * The raid took place in the pre-dawn hours of June 10th, 2014. At approximately 6:16 a.m., Kari Edwards and her live-in boyfriend were intruded upon by men dressed in full SWAT gear and wielding rifles. After smashing down the couple’s front door, agents tossed concussion grenades and proceeded into the home. “They busted in like I was a terrorist or...

KILLEEN (May 14, 2014) Documents released Wednesday including search warrant affidavits and a lengthy evidence inventory provide details of both the drug raid that left one Killeen police officer dead and another injured and of the crime scene investigation that followed the deadly shooting. Police Detective Charles “Chuck” Dinwiddie, 47, and Officer Odis Denton, 37, were shot as they and other officers served the narcotics search warrant just after 5:30 a.m. Friday at 1104 Circle M Dr. Apt. 3 in Killeen. Dinwiddie died at 1:30 p.m. Sunday in the intensive care unit of Scott & White Hospital. Denton, who was...

Officer shoots dog The officer can be seen shooting the dog in this picture and in the video A man in Idaho with Parkinson’s disease had his service dog shot by an officer who felt the dog was too aggressive. It was as the man’s 9-year old son’s birthday party wound down. The officer came in response to a call that the dogs were on the loose. He shot the 7-year-old black labrador, named “Hooch,” at point-blank range when the dog menaced him. The dog’s owner Rick Clubb said the officer was much too trigger-happy. Adding insult to injury, Mr....

E ucation ‘Is This America?’: Parent ‘Manhandled’, Arrested While Speaking Out Against Common Core at Public Forum Sep. 20, 2013 7:30pm Jason Howerton Related: Video A parent in Towson, Md., was arrested Thursday night at a public forum after vocally expressing his concerns about the Baltimore County School District’s plan to use Common Core standards in its curriculum. Robert Small, a concerned father, was forcefully removed from the meeting by a police officer after he interrupted Baltimore County Schools Superintendent Dallas Dance during the question-and-answer portion of the forum. The meeting apparently didn’t allow parents to stand up and ask...

In the last 10 years, American forces have cleared cities house by house plenty of times. But they don't usually do that right here in the United States. This video shows a specific example of what it looks like when thousands of police and FBI agents descended on suburban America decked out in military gear. They had orders to clear a "20-block area" of the neighborhood, and systematically searched from door-to-door. The video shows police shouting at an innocent resident and barking at him repeatedly to keep his hands up.

The American approach to law enforcement was forged by the experience of revolution. Emerging as they did from the shadow of British rule, the country's founders would likely have viewed police, as they exist today, as a standing army, and therefore a threat to liberty. Even so, excessive force and disregard for the Bill of Rights have become epidemic in today’s world. According to civil liberties reporter Radley Balko, these are all symptoms of a generation-long shift to increasingly aggressive, militaristic, and arguably unconstitutional policing—one that would have shocked the conscience of America’s founders. Rise of the Warrior Cop traces...

Security for President Barack Obama's second inauguration will, of course, be extremely tight. Uniformed police will be everywhere in Washington. ---snip--- But some of the security is meant to be nearly invisible. At Union Station, two men who could have been waiting for a train were actually DHS Behavioral Detection Officers who blend into the crowd. Trained to look for suspicious behavior among passengers, they were in communication with teams of armed TSA officers.

Seeing that the CA Fascist thug from the US House of Lords, Dianne "Brownshirt" Feinstein. is threatening law-abiding US peasants with forced National Firearm Act registration of ALL semi-automatic weapons, the question arises: Can the BATF search your house at will if you have an NFA registered weapon? I have seen this answered in the affirmative elsewhere. Basically, the Fascist thug old bat wants to get rid of the 4th Amendment for gun-owning peasants, as she knifes the Second Amendment in the back.

An internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security document indicates that a controversial program designed to predict whether a person will commit a crime is already being tested on some members of the public voluntarily, CNET has learned. If this sounds a bit like the Tom Cruise movie called "Minority Report," or the CBS drama "Person of Interest," it is. But where "Minority Report" author Philip K. Dick enlisted psychics to predict crimes, DHS is betting on algorithms: it's building a "prototype screening facility" that it hopes will use factors such as ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate to "detect cues...